Researchers discover largest and oldest-known Maya structure

A Mayan temple.
(Image credit: Hugo Borges/AFP via Getty Images)

Using a remote sensing method, scientists working in southern Mexico found an ancient structure that has a total volume exceeding Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza.

The discovery in Aguada Fénix is the largest and oldest-known structure built by the Maya civilization, Reuters reports. A rectangular elevated platform made of clay and earth, it was built between 1000 and 800 BC, is nearly a quarter-mile wide and nine-tenths of a mile long, and stood 33 to 50 feet high.

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University of Arizona archeologist Takeshi Inomata led the research, published Wednesday in Nature, and told Reuters the structure is "so large horizontally, if you walk on it, it just looks like natural landscape." Researches believe it was used "for special occasions, possibly tied to calendrical cycles. The rituals probably involved processions along the causeways and within the rectangular plaza. The people also deposited symbolic objects such as jade axes in the center of the plateau."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.